


A Is For Angel

by Ghostinthehouse



Series: The Angel's Bookshop [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), POV Outsider, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queer Guardian Angel Aziraphale (Good Omens), Snake Crowley (Good Omens), The Blitz, Trans Character, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-12 07:21:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19942357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostinthehouse/pseuds/Ghostinthehouse
Summary: 200 years of the bookshop existing. 200 years of whispers and promises. Of hope and help and dreams and books.And the stories told of it.





	1. 1790

_"Once upon a time, there was a man called Angel, who ran a bookshop..."_

Tom slipped through the railings into the park and looked around. The rent on his family's tiny room was due tomorrow, he couldn't afford to pay for a streetseller's license, and his little sibs were crying with hunger when he left. His gaze landed on a chubby man in white tossing bread to the ducks, and talking distractedly to a tall man in black. His own gut cramped painfully. He wanted that bread, or something like it, but not if it meant fighting ducks for it. All he had left was his pride. And enough desperation to try anything. He sidled closer, and reached out as lightly as he can. Next thing he knew, there was a hand fastened on his collar, faster than he had ever imagined. It's the companion in black. Man must have reflexes like a snake, he thought.

The man in white looked them over and gave an exasperated huff. "Put him down, Crowley, the child's nothing but skin and bone."

"You sure, angel? He was trying to pick your pocket."

"Quite sure." Angel dipped his fingers into his pocket and then waved his hand dramatically around Tom's ears, seeming very pleased to have pretended to pull coins from thin air. "Here, take these instead."

Tom grabbed them and made them vanish better and more easily than Angel made them appear.

Crowley reached into an inside pocket of his black coat and came out with a paper bag. He dropped it into Tom's hands. "You might as well take this too. No point feeding it to the ducks now." It was full of bread rolls. Miraculously, they were even still fresh. "Now run, before either of us changes our mind," the man grumbled, releasing him.

Tom bolted. He glanced back only once, but it was enough to confirm his first impression of the pair. He hoped that someday he'd find a boy who looked at him the way Crowley looked at his Angel, but for now, he had rent to pay, and little sibs to feed, and for once, he didn't have to choose between the two.

It wasn't until after they finished the bread that he found the precious streetseller's license tucked into the bottom of the bag, folded around enough small coins to get him started in the trade.

It wasn't until 15 years later, when he was well established in the street trade, that he saw them emerging from a bookshop together and locking the door behind them. They hadn't changed a bit. He didn't thank them, but he did watch them go before he registered the name of the shop.

It was A.Z. Fell & Co, and of course, he thought, the memory ringing in his ears, the A must stand for Angel.


	2. 1812

_"Once upon a time there was a little bookshop where nobody judged you and you could find almost anything you needed to read, as long as you didn't want to buy it...."_

Aziraphale looked up as the bell on the shop door announced a customer. A man, he noted absently as he moved to greet him. One of those humans that had to make an effort for their gender, just as angels did. "I'm Mr Fell. the owner. How can I help, Mr...?"

"James Barry. Someone mentioned you had an interesting set of books on medicine? I'm particularly interested in George Cheyne."

"Are you looking to buy, sir?"

A snort. "I'm a student, I don't have the money to buy rare books, I just need to read them."

"Ah," Aziraphale brightened. "In that case, let me see what I can find." He led the way down to the medical section and sighed. "Excuse me, my dear," he murmured, lifting the dozing black and red snake off the top of the pile and draping it round his neck. The snake roused just enough to wind itself around him like a second waistcoat and then went back to sleep in warm contentment. "Now, let me see..."

"Are you wearing a snake?"

"He likes the warmth." Aziraphale said absently, setting the Cheyne down in a small cleared area. "Would you like a cup of tea while you read, dear?"


	3. 1917

_"Once upon a time, there was a man who ran a bookshop, and he was an angel to those in need, even when they didn't know it..."_

Thunder cracked suddenly, and Richards found he'd dived for the nearest doorway before he had time to think. He gasped for breath, leaving his back pressed to the wall, and reminded himself fiercely that he wasn't at the Front any more. For all the good that did when his mind took every sudden sound as a sign of danger. Even that level of alertness hadn't let him keep Jack safe.

His mind brought back narrow hands lit by the faint glow of a cigarette, or wrapped around a tin cup. The way their faint trembling (everyone's hands shook after the first week or so, it was nothing) made the shadows dance. The curve of a jaw caught between greatcoat and helmet. Brown eyes that were somehow so much deeper and warmer than the mud surrounding them.

It ached, deep inside, like snagging his heart on the barbed wire. Sometimes all he wanted was to lie down in the mud beside whatever was left of Jack and never wake up again. He closed his own eyes for a long breath, then opened them again and looked frantically around for something else to focus on. He was standing in the doorway of a bookshop. Rain spattered against the ground and he backed away. Might as well look round. It would be drier than out here, and probably quiet.

A bell jangled above him as he shoved the door open. He flinched. There was a sudden blur of black and white and khaki as a thin uniformed red-haired man lunged to guard a chubbier blond in a white coat.

They stood in a frozen tableau, the red-head pressing the blond defensively behind him, and Richards caught by the entrance. He made sure that both empty hands were visible and stayed as still as possible. The last time he'd badly startled someone this obviously fresh out of the trenches he'd been thrown into a table, and he wasn't so foolish as to make the same mistake twice.

At last he made a tentative hand-signal from the set that was shared between the Allies. "All clear/stand down." The man's attention snapped to the moving hand, that much was noticeable despite his dark glasses. Not blind then, as so many were. A moment later, he sagged from the tensely protective stance, and Richards turned cautiously away and dropped his own gaze to the nearest pile of books to give the other two some small modicum of privacy.

"Crowley? Are you all right? Your hands..."

"Ngk. It's nothing. M'Fine, angel. Jusst fine. You going to deal with your customer?"

Richards said without turning. "It's raining. I was just - looking for, um, shelter. Um, don't mind me." There was a long moment of silence behind him, and then quiet footsteps moving around, fairly obviously not trying to be silent. Which was good, because he wasn't sure his own nerves wouldn't treat someone who _was_ trying to be silent as an attacker.

"You can stop pretending to be interested in those books now."

Richards looked up at the red-head, now perched on the arm of a battered chair with a casual confidence about as thin and concealing as the skin on a cooling mug of cocoa. "If you say so. Sir."

"I do. Go on with you. Rain's stopping." The man shoved his hands into his pockets and stretched out long legs.

"Crowley!" The blond man's hands and eyes were weirdly steady in comparision to both of theirs. Civilian steady, Richards reminded himself. Steady was supposed to be normal. "Do forgive him, he only recently returned. I'm Mr Fell, the shop owner."

"Richards." Richards shrugged as casually as he could manage. So this was Fell's bookshop. He'd heard of it, in more ways than one. Never open, never sold anything, with an owner and his lover-boy that never aged. Clearly some of those were wrong, because it had been open, hadn't it? "I lost my best friend," he said in explanation, trying and failing to keep his voice steady. "I can hardly blame someone else for protecting theirs."

There was a muffled thud as Crowley slid off the arm of the chair, but Fell didn't seem to notice. He said, "I'm so sorry to hear it." He even sounded like he meant it.

Richards shrugged again. "Stuff happens." It hurt to brush it off like that, but it would hurt more to have to pick his way through the politenesses surrounding death. "I'll go." He reached back for the door, expecting the jangle this time, just as Fell reached forward and clasped Richards' free hand in both of his for a long moment. Richards froze again, but all the other man said was, "Safe journeys and sweet dreams." It sounded almost like a blessing and his head came up to meet Fell's blue eyes, like a lark rising into the blue sky after a long dark night.

From somewhere a long way off, he heard Crowley mutter, " _Gently_ , angel." Then he was free, and out of there. He didn't think about it again for years, but when he did, it was to add his own tales to those the younger members of his found family needed to know.


	4. 1941

_"Once upon a time there was a sanctuary where the lost can be found, and it looked like a bookshop..."_

Harry ran through streets as shattered as her world and her life, too blinded by tears to notice where she was going. The rising scream of an air-raid siren tore her from her daze, but by then she was hopelessly lost. She swiped the tears away with her sleeve and looked desperately around for some sign as to where she could shelter, but there wasn't even anyone to ask.

Then a door opened in one of the shops and a voice yelled, "Hey, you, kid. In here!" and then back over his shoulder, "Angel, company coming!"

Relief carried her past the skinny man in black, and into a cluttered bookshop. The windows were covered in crosses of tape, and the books piled high on the floor formed a maze. He led her through it with an odd sauntering stride that rolled his weight from one foot to the other and into a backroom with battered squashy armchairs tucked in under a staircase. One of the armchairs was occupied by a plump older man in an old fashioned cream suit. The skinny man sprawled into one opposite him, and propped his feet up on a low table between them.

"Crowley, really," the man in cream said, "do you have to?"

The man in black pushed his dark glasses higher up his nose. "You're the one who keeps telling me to stay off my feet, angel." And to Harry, "Take a seat, kid, we'll be here a while."

Harry looked for confirmation at the other man, who in turn looked up and beamed at her. "Yes, yes, sit down. I'll get another cup." He vanished through a small door.

Harry perched nervously in the nearest of the two unoccupied chairs, horribly aware of her own grubbiness and the tearstains on her face, and looked around warily as the relief ebbed. It didn't seem much like a shelter, and she'd expected there to be more people in it if it was. "I thought it would be a cellar," she said, the words dropping into the room like little lead balloons.

"Yeah, well, nearest official shelter to here is in a church crypt, and you wouldn't get me down there for any amount of money. And he won't abandon his books, so here we are." The skinny man ran long fingers through his red hair. "It's safe enough, no one's passing overhead this time."

"I should think not," the man in cream huffed, returning with a mug of tea that he set down on the table in front of Harry. "As if I'd let you go into another church when you haven't even healed from-" he cut himself off. "Forgive me, my dear, I'm Mr Fell, and this is Crowley."

"I'm Henrietta, sir," she replied politely.

"And is that what you like to be called, my dear?"

Harry stared down at the tea and shook her head ever so slightly. It wasn't what she liked, but it was the name she had been given and she had to make do with it, didn't she?

Crowley and Mr Fell exchanged a long look, and then the corner of Crowley's mouth twitched upward. "I picked my own name, as it happens. Liked it better that way." He tipped his head to one side, eyeing her through those dark glasses of his. "Pick a name you want us to use, kid. Or stick to 'kid' if you like that better."

She swallowed hard. Mary used the name she preferred, and a few other friends knew it, but these were strangers. Perhaps it was better that way. If it all went wrong she'd never have to see them again. She swallowed again and whispered, "Harry," in the tiniest of voices.

Mr Fell beamed, and she felt warm all over, as if he radiated sunlight. "That's a lovely name, my dear."

Harry flushed and buried her nose in her mug of tea. It felt safe here, as if a muscle she hadn't realised was tense had relaxed. As if part of her knew, completely and utterly, that no harm would or could come to her here, no matter what. As if she was known and accepted and - and _loved_ \- exactly as she was. It washed against the sorest, most broken parts of her and tears rose again in response.

"Angel...."

"Sorry, dear," and the warmth ebbed, though Mr Fell was still smiling.

Crowley sank back in his chair, arms splayed wide. "He forgets himself sometimes." There was a tension in him that sat in odd contrast to the apparently relaxed pose. Mary's uncle looked that way sometimes in bad raids, though he'd never explain why. "Here." He tossed Harry a clean hanky, and that tiny kindness undid her.

All she could see was the moment she turned the corner into her street, and her home was gone, and the shelter was gone, and her whole family was - gone - and the people left were looking at her with such pitying kindness that it burned. And she fled, burning, and weeping, and weeping, and burning, as if the tears could put out the flaming ball of grief where her heart had been.

Mr Fell's voice seemed to come from a long way away as he said, "Oh my dear."

Crowley's was a soft wordless hiss and then there was a hand gripping her and she realised she was trying to run again. In the middle of an air-raid. The hand was thin and hard and stronger than she could escape, wrapped painfully tight around her arm, pulling her back to face him. " _Kid,_ " he said. "Harry. Look at me." 

She trembled in his grip. A long elegant finger touched her chin and lifted it until she was staring straight into opaque black glasses. She saw her own face reflected in them, and around it, another face, all sharp bones and angles, a hard line of mouth, a long nose, red hair, and most importantly, no kindness to burn her. No pity. No soft sympathy for a newly orphaned child.

"Kid," he said again, his voice very casually off-hand, "if you think I'm giving myself the extra work of cleaning you off the cobbles out there, you can think again. Why do you think I brought you in here in the first place? Don't answer that. Just stay put and breathe. And don't listen to him," this at the soft huff from Mr Fell. "He doesn't know, he just thinks he does." 

The uncaring offhandedness of his words was like a balm on her burning heart, something to cling to, something to anchor her. She gasped, and began to breathe again, slower, steadier, only a little of the shakiness left from sobbing. Her strength drained away as calmness took over and she sagged until only his grip held her up. He took the weight with a mouth that tightened still further around a hiss of breath and eased her down into a chair instead. "Get some sleep, it'll pass the time." She nodded against the soft cushion and curled up tighter as her heavy, tear-weighted, eyes closed. Behind her, fingers snapped quietly.

"Crowley, that was very k-"

"Shut up, angel. Kindness is the last thing that kid needs right now."

A huff of offended breath.

An exasperated sound somewhere between a hiss and a sigh. Then silence.

She woke under a tartan blanket, stiff from being curled so tight, to voices in the shop.

"Richards, wasn't it?" Mr Fell said. "It's been some time since we met."

"Just a bit," came the laconic answer of Mary's uncle. "I don't suppose you've found a girl named Henrietta? She and my niece are, you might say, best friends, and I wondered..."

"As it happens, yes."

Harry crawled off the chair and stumbled to the doorway.

"Harry!" Mary cried and barreled into her, holding her for all she was worth. Harry lost her breath, and then found it again in the shelter of Mary's arms, and just clung.

Over their heads, Crowley nodded once to Richards, as one old soldier might to another. Richards stared for a long moment, then nodded back.


	5. 1 year Post Apocalapse

_"Once upon a time, there was Crowley and his Angel, and a bookshop that they ran together, and they were our Pride and our joy...."_

Crowley and Aziraphale glance at each other as they sense power waiting ahead of them on their way back from Pride. "Your lot or mine?" Crowley asks.

Aziraphale frowns a moment, and then his mouth dips sadly. "Mine," he says.

The little girl tugs at his sleeve. "What's the matter, Mr Fell?"

He sighs. "My - people - don't like me being with Crowley," he tells her carefully, and she nods as if that explains everything.

"People don't like my mums being together either," she says with an understanding smile. "But I do!"

The word goes down the street like a ripple in the pond, and comes back like a rising tide. 200 years of whispers and promises. Of hope and help and dreams and books. Of "if everything falls apart, look for A.Z. Fell's" and "It's a haven" and "He's one of us" coalescing into "You leave him alone! He's _ours_!"

"That smug bastard over there in the grey suit, right?" asks a biker with a jacket full of pride pins. "You want me to get rid of him for you, love?"

Aziraphale pulls a face, looking for all the world like a tetchy old ewe. "Better not." He starts slowly down the street again with Crowley sauntering at his shoulder.

"Fair enough," and the biker falls in half a pace behind them, jacket swinging with each stride. The little girl skips alongside Aziraphale, rainbow flags lightly smudged on her cheeks. The group swells like a Pride parade in miniature wrapping around the angel and demon in quiet, fierce, support.

The smug bastard in question looks at them as they approach. "Aziraphale," he says flatly, as if it's an incontestable order. "You can't get married. Not to him. We won't permit it."

Aziraphale hesitates for a long moment, and then his chin lifts, and his soft face _sets_ somehow, like a tetchy old ewe that's just seen a wolf trying to make off with her lamb and is about to do something about it. He holds out his left hand to Crowley, who clasps it and they stand in defiant unity before Gabriel.

Slowly, steadily, stubbornly, the crowd draws tighter around them, until Crowley and Aziraphale are surrounded and every eye in the group is glaring at Gabriel, who wilts fractionally under the force of their love for the ineffable couple.

For a moment, there's a tense stand-off. It's broken by the piercing sweet voice of the small girl. "My mama," she tells Gabriel, rainbow cheeks tilted angelically up to him, "says people like you should just go to hell." Her voice rings as clearly as any bell.

A bark of laughter escapes Crowley at Gabriel's splutter. "Hell wouldn't have him." Still holding Aziraphale with one hand, Crowley produces a slim lighter in the other and flicks it on.

Gabriel's violet eyes latch onto the tiny flame and he takes a step back. "You wouldn't dare! Don't you know who I am?"

Crowley's mouth curves into a sardonic grin. "Try me, Archangel fucking Gabriel."

The biker folds their arms in a squeak of leather rubbing against leather, and growls, not at all sotto voce and with a great deal of scorn and disbelief, "If he's Archangel Gabriel, I'm the Virgin Mary."

"You are not!" Gabriel erupts. "You do not get to take her name in vain."

"Yeah, right." The biker glares. "We know something about angels round here, and you don't meet the criteria."

Aziraphale clears his throat. His cheeks are pink. "Thank you, Chris, but I think perhaps that's enough."

The biker tilts their head at their name. "I'm not talking about Hell's Angels this time, love."

Gabriel makes a choking sound. His mouth opens and closes but for a long moment no words come out, only a steadily increasing pearlescent white glow. "Is that what you're calling yourself these days?"

"Good Lord, no. They're a group of human bikers," Aziraphale huffs, his own pale glow also building, but more opalescent in that it flickered with all the shades of love. "I'm an open book these days."

"You always were, angel, to anyone really looking." Crowley's mouth softens for a moment like wax warmed by a candle, then sets back into a hard line. His tight black clothing seems to get darker, taking an iridescent sheen like a starling's wing. He bites off each word. "Gabriel. Shut your stupid mouth and go already."

There's a flare of light and a startled pop, and Gabriel vanishes.

Crowley winces, even with the dark glasses in place, and the flame on the lighter goes out. "Well. That was a thing. Tone it down, would you, angel."

The light around Aziraphale winks out. "Where did you exorcise him to, my dear? I do believe that was the first time it's been done."

"Ngk. Not sure. Was just thinking something about cleaning up the mess, really. Could have been Upstairs or Down." [1]

1\. In actual fact it was neither. Gabriel had been banished to a janitor's closet just off the lobby between the two and was trying, without much success, to extract himself from the vacuum cleaner.


End file.
